FILTER Magazine #56

By Alejandro Rubio on September 21, 2012

How To Dress Well’s second full-length release, Total Loss, is, from the first track onwards, a confessional that draws you along with a line of thread until the album ends and you’re left standing in an immense mass of string. Tom Krell knows how to rouse your expectations and make you really wait for it by introducing each track as a seemingly simple song that inevitably blooms into a heavily textured R & B heartbreaker. His use of tension is best captured on the track “& It Was U,” which begins with Krell singing a capella in his Aaliyah-esque falsetto until finger-snapping and foot-stomping are overtaken by layered effects and a mechanized clapping backbeat that could contend with Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack.” Although Total Loss focuses on the deterioration of relationships over time, it’s interesting that each track inverts that idea by flourishing with every second that passes.